My favorite ferocious feminist has declared this to be “Sod off, God! Week” at I Blame The Patriarchy. There’s no respite from the patriarchy blaming, but she is taking a sledge to a few sacred cows as a sideline. Like this:
Take ritual, for instance. My suspicion is that ritual is no deep human need. As a concept it gives off quite the lip-wrinkling whiff of eau du primitif. And what about that trio of stinky undertones — conformity, obeisance, and orthodoxy — that comes with it? Add the collateral conditions of exclusivity and tradition, and you got yourself all the field marks of one of those bogus assumptions that status-quoticians are always trumpeting as “natural” or “instinctive” but which are really just tools of the patriarchy or opiates of the people or what have you. You know. “Big tits are sexy.” “Women’s minds are naturally less inclined toward mathematics.” “Van Morrison is a genius.” Etc.
I’ve heard that so often: that people need ritual, that there’s something beautiful and comforting about the predictable and stately. Why? I get along fine without it, and find it a nuisance when I’m subjected to it, so it’s clearly not a universal human need, like food or love. If you’re brought up with it, if it’s dunned into your head that you must attend Sunday services or you will go to hell, I can understand how the relief from an artificial anxiety might feel good…but why not cut the problem off at the roots and raise kids who aren’t instilled with those foolish fears?
Ritual is a head game. It’s the droning repetition of nonsense that the church has used for millennia to kill the muses of creativity and individuality—and once they’ve punched that god-shaped hole in your head, they’ve got you hooked on the weekly or daily pap sessions needed to fill the gap with the sacred version of gelfoam.*
*That reference may be a little obscure. In my neurosurgical days, we used to chop bits of brains out of experimental animals, and you don’t just leave a hole—you pack it with light space-filling foam. They only need it because we’ve cut out something more essential.
Oh, I used gelfoam a lot, so I got your reference instantly.
Wait…how is “big tits are sexy” a patriarchal tool? They are! I think it’s “small tits are not” that could be portrayed as a negative concept.
“You know. “Big tits are sexy.” “Women’s minds are naturally less inclined toward mathematics.” “Van Morrison is a genius.” Etc.”
There is absolutely NO reason to diss Van Morrison.
I don’t know if all ritual is bad. Where I worship, it goes something like this:
“Hey bartender, got any more of that Belhaven?”
“Yeah, I think we’ve got a brand new keg.”
Then follows reverent anticipation on my part while placement of the coaster is accomplished. The drawing and placement of the holy beverage is done next. Then I tithe the tip jar and commence worshiping.
I think your analogy is unfair to gelfoam. After all, gelfoam is wonderful stuff.
re: Van Morrison is overrated. Great line.
That’s lovely rhetoric, but human beings have an unfortunate tendency to flee in horror from freedom and seek comfort in order-imposed-from-above.
I blame our evolutionary history – pack animals simply don’t make very good sentients.
Nice coinage. Props to IBTP for that one.
This was not always the case. Without the church, there would have been no Pérotin, no Dante Alighieri, no Johannes Ockeghem, no Thomás Luís de Victoria, no Heironymous Bosch, no Johann Sebastian Bach. Of course, they all flowered in a relatively brief, increasingly enlightened period between the 13th and the 18th centuries, and it’s not as if there weren’t any woos around at the same time.
Before and after that, though, it was all oppression and fear all the time.
You are conflating ritual with religion here. Anthropologists consider them to be different things, ritual often includes very little if any religious element. For example having coffee and reading the NYT magazine on Sunday morning is a ritual that I enjoy deeply. The Fourth of July ritual of blowing things up is about remembering the American Revolution and (at least nominal) break from theocracy. Plenty of atheists enjoy these rituals.
Also, while individuals may be able to do without religion or many types of ritual, you would be hard pressed to point to any society that doesn’t practice some form of either. That doesn’t necessarily make it a human universal, but it does make it a social universal. As an atheist social scientist I frankly find this rather liberating. When I was a young person in a very religious family I first started questioning my faith after I realized that not everybody worshipped people with funny hats living in Rome. It looked to me like cultures all over the world had religious beliefs but most of them didn’t jive with each other. Then religious ritual seemed more like something that people tend to do for themselves rather than some universal truth. I can’t say I’ve taken any religious ‘truth’ very seriously since then.
@marlonrh:
Belhaven is made about 1 mile down the road from me and today the wind is in the right direction so the whole town smells of brewery…
I don’t think ritual is a bad thing. It gives us something to look forward to – evening meal with family; lazy Sunday mornings in bed; favourite podcast released every fortnight; checking online comics before starting work. These are all rituals which make my time a little brighter than it would be.
The problem is performing rituals when we don’t want to – rituals performed through obligation or duty rather than desire. If you’d rather read the mountain of sunday papers while eating a lazy brunch then why not? Sod god…
Ritual is a head game. It’s the droning repetition of nonsense
Lk wrtng Phryngl dy n nd dy t.
r prhps bttr stll, th nd t CSs t rd Phryngl dy n nd dy t. Knd f lk rdng th nwsppr vry dy vr cff, nly lss nfrmtv.
Agreed.
Stop pampering the nutcases.
At bottom, this is all about defeating ignorance.
People in positions of power who perpetuate religion should be criticized relentlessly. They willfully, intentionally keep people in darkness. That’s wrong.
Sod off God and all his idiot enablers.
How do you know? Maybe when musical genius flowers it takes advantage of whatever manure it happens to be growing in.
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Yeah. And then again, maybe there would have been ten thousand OTHER Bachs and Dantes – not to mention Jeffersons and Franklins and Einsteins and Edisons – if only artistic and intellectual and philosophical pursuits hadn’t been viciously suppressed by the church.
Imagine the world we might be living in if the likes of Newton and Curie and Darwin had come along a thousand years sooner.
Sure there were bright sparks that escaped from under the wet blanket of religion. But the FIRE that we might have had … Damn.
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I have some Muslim neighbors. Nice people, but I was watching one of their visitors one day, sitting in his van across the street and reading aloud from a tiny little book (the Koran, I assumed), and rocking forward and back in his seat.
It was one of those aha! moments for me: this guy was so averse to the thoughts his own mind might produce that he was WORKING HARD at drowning out those thoughts, killing them, by replacing them with the thoughts of someone else.
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Given the prevalence of ritual in human history, I think its inarguable that people LIKE rituals of all sorts, whether its celebrating Mass, tailgating before the football game, or having a moment of quiet reflection before flushing the dead goldfish.
For myself, having a ceremony associated with my getting married, or having a memorial service for my dad serves my emotional needs to certify certain occasions as extra important. I should point out that neither of these occasions were marked with any religious flavor-ritual doesn’t not equate with Xtian.
That’s just how my wiring is-I like ritual, for the most part. I certainly don’t consider myself any MORE married than someone who went to the JOP, or LESS married than someone who got married by their local bishop, or whatever.
Oh, and big tits are sexy, as are small and medium sized ones.
Hey. Big tits ARE sexy. That’s all there is to it.
PZ, I doubt whether you get along without ritual. At the risk of being accused of sounding like Pinker, just look around you and notice all of the daily rituals that you see.
Do you get up every morning and make your first cup of coffee or cocoa exactly the same way each time? Do you stop in Starbucks for your $5 coffee? How many people do you know that have standing lunch dates with a particular group of friends?
I go to the farmers market every Saturday at the same time and take strawberries to my mother. I know several families who have “pizza Friday’s”.
Have you ever spent time with someone who is in the Autism spectrum? They’ve got all kinds of rituals that the have to perform or else they get really upset. If Autism is caused by a developmental disorder, as seems likely, it could be that Autistic behavior is present in everyone but normal people have a developmental pathway that supresses the Autistic symptoms.
I know that anecdotes are not evidence, but it seems entirely reasonable to me that comfort in ritual could be an evolutionary adaptation. Pinker talks about rite of passage rituals and food taboos and how they could have evolutionary advantages.
So, I wouldn’t reject out of hand that people need/appreciate ritual.
Actually it’s FIRM ,/b> tits that are sexy ……
“Actually it’s FIRM , tits that are sexy”
Twisty is rolling in her grave (a.k.a. comfy Austin apartment).
Can people of the male persuasion stop turning this thread into “objectificationz R Us?”
Merci.
Also, ditto whoever said that ritual encompasses much more than religion. I rather like ritual, for instance. No religious impulse whatsoever though.
I could get into going to church… if it was all in Latin or some other language I didn’t understand, and nobody asked me for money or expected me to hate on gays.
I just dig the smell of incense and the sound of pipe organ music echoing off the ceiling. But not enough to get up at seven on a Sunday morning to get dressed up and go experience it.
I think we are in danger of confusing routine and ritual. I have a morning routine (a particular mug of my favourite coffee) to last me until my neurons are up to daytime speed, whereas according to Wikipedia:
A ritual is a formalised, predetermined set of symbolic actions generally performed in a particular environment at a regular, recurring interval. The set of actions that comprise a ritual often include, but are not limited to, such things as recitation, singing, group processions, repetitive dance, manipulation of sacred objects, etc. ..
And yes ritual is used to identify ingroup and outgroup, but are we a pack animal, a herd beast, a troop, or a clan? Or lots of individuals trying to get along.
It might help if we were all “measuring using the same units.” OCD is not habit is not ritual is not religion is not special occasion is not tradition. I masochistically watch the Minnesota Vikings most Sundays during the football season. If I have a chance to do something better (dentist appointment, Van Morrison concert), I do that instead. Do I feel an elevated sense of anxiety because I didn’t “perform the ritual” of watching the Vikings? Not at all. I can’t think of a single habit that I have that I feel I MUST have to alleviate some unnatural anxiety. I think that might be the difference with religious ritual. Often, it’s not merely something people look forward to and enjoy taking part in. It’s something they feel driven to by obligation, guilt, and angst. The things that we look forward to voluntarily–including traditionally religious holidays like Christmas–can help enrich our lives. We don’t need them, but they can aid flourishing, tap our creativity, connect us with people we love and identify with. Ritual seems to coral flourishing and reduce human feeling to rote action. But certain habits, occasions, and traditions can have the opposite effect and call forth our best selves. I think we can rightly abhor religion without depriving ourselves of one of its useful discoveries–people enjoy meeting together for a purpose, often a meaningless purpose, just to be together. It’s no accident that the word “entertainment” has roots that mean something like “tying together.” I guess what I’m trying to say is, you’ll have to pry Friday happy hour from my cold, dead hands.
Can people of the male persuasion stop turning this thread into “objectificationz R Us?”
Pah. We’re all objects. Some are sexier than others.
Or so I hear.
Graduation, then – there’s a ritual complete with silly clothes and pointless tradition, and Latin if you’re lucky. What do people reckon to graduation ceremonies?
I don’t think ritual’s a human need, but I do think it can be harnessed to achieve the sense of occasion and continuity that people do want at times.
Anyway, Twisty is fantastically thought-provoking and deserves many a delicious taco.
That certain kinds of ritual appear to give their practitioners reassurance or confidence is a well-established argument. But you need to call on some entirely different explanatory mechanism for people engaging in rituals that even they think are long, boring, and often personally meaningless — and frankly, that’s what an awful lot of religious rituals are like.
I like my morning cup of coffee, it is true. If it were delivered by an old man in a fancy hat, swinging a censer and chanting and with a team of choirboys singing, though…that would get old fast.
The objectivation is also getting old. What’s sexy is the person behind the lumps of chest fat, and if you’re judging sexiness by weighing how many pounds of swollen glandular tissue they have, you’re falling into a rather superficial trap.
No reason to condemn all rituals. I’d like to have a ritual, say on every Wednesday at 3pm, where everyone stopped talking, reading, and writing for 10 minutes; all computer monitors, TV’s and radios were turned off; and people just sat or walked in silence. It would be a time were everyone could just experience being alive without excess input. 10 minutes too scary? Okay, just give me 5.
As others have mentioned routine, habit, and disorders are not ritual. But the ritualists always try to convince us that their ritual is the same as our habit or routine. It is not. It is the only way they have of masquerading their rituals and claiming that we all are ritualizing living. But that is only one of the many things that keeps them locked into their fantasies.
As far as Van The Man? He is popular because he is good. Just like titties they’re popular because their good. Especially those rare perfect exquisite miniatures, but mostly when they come with a Smart Strong Godless woman.
The two are not as separate as you make out, but rather points on a continuum. As soon as failure to carry out a routine action induces a feeling of disappointment, you are on the way to a ritual. Deprive any large group of people of their morning coffee, and the chances are that you will encounter much stronger emotions than mere disappointment.
The real error is a simple bit of busted logic:
a) People need ritual; (true in most cases)
b) Religious services are a ritual; (true)
c) Therefore people need religious services. (rubbish)
And yet, you can’t bring yourself not to read, can you?
I hate hypocritical trolls.
And yet, you can’t bring yourself not to read, can you?
I hate hypocritical trolls.
What if that’s the origin of ritual?
It’s not the only symptom of religion that could be explained as mental disorder. Hearing God talk to you? Schizophrenia.
“The objectivation is also getting old. What’s sexy is the person behind the lumps of chest fat, and if you’re judging sexiness by weighing how many pounds of swollen glandular tissue they have, you’re falling into a rather superficial trap.”
Indeed. Everyone knows that breasts are just surrogates anyway. You should have said “What’s sexy is the person’s behind.” and just left it at that.
Chris Gruber:
Really? I heard we’re all meat. Delicious meat…
So we’re delicious sculptures of meat?
Turning this into a “but what about the men?” thread is no less obnoxious
“I could get into going to church… if it was all in Latin or some other language I didn’t understand, and nobody asked me for money or expected me to hate on gays.”
Yeah, that is why I like going to ceremonies at the local Theravada temple with my wife. I can’t understand anything being said (other than the Three Jewels), but I enjoy the chanting.
Titties aren’t sexy by themselves. It takes talent to wield them correctly.
Hmm. I don’t *need* ritual, granted. But sometimes, for marking important things (like getting married, for example) I *like* ritual. I think if my husband-to-be and I had gotten up one morning, thrown on jeans and sweatshirts and stopped by the Justice of the Peace to sign the marriage license before getting breakfast, I’d feel a little let down. I can just imagine the Justice saying “Well… You’re married. … Um. Congratulations?”
Since it’s “Sod off, God” week, might we also say “sod off” to other vacuous terms like “patriarchy”. The world of The Patriarchy, where everyone is cast in the role of either victim or victimizer, is nearly as mythical as God’s kingdom in the clouds.
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I agree with PZ. Ritual is not routine (habit).
We all have habits, thousands of them. But the habit (routine) of getting up and having coffee every morning has no greater significance, no other meaning, than a conveniently set way of doing something.
I put on my right sock first, every time. This is not some quasi-religious observance, however. It’s just habit, and it carries no significance. I slide under the same electric blanket every winter night, and it’s always set to “4,” but I inject no greater meaning into either practice.
Habit does not equal ritual. A ritual might have a large component of habit in it, but a habit doesn’t have to have one tiny scrap of ritual in it.
… Just imagine the outrage if you told someone that attending Midnight Mass – the annual Christian RITUAL held at the stroke of midnight as Christmas Eve ticks into Christmas Day – was only a habit.
(In fact, religious or nationalistic rituals are probably specifically for the purpose of establishing in your target population certain unbreakable habits. Whereas habits need be no more than simple conveniences.)
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Just FYI, seems to me that it’s better to look at each different word as somehow separate in meaning from all the others. The separation might be a very minor nuance, but it’s important to notice that nuance IF you want to convey something subtle.
If your approach is always “this word means exactly the same as that word,” and you use them interchangeably, you cripple the ability of your language to convey subtle nuances. You cripple your own ability to SEE subtle differences between this idea and that.
To give you some idea of how much this matters, this is precisely what happens every time Christianists insist “Evolution is only a theory.” They deliberately (I believe) collapse the diverse meanings of “theory” into the single “wild guess somebody came up with,” and the result is that they are unable even to think about the obvious technical meaning. And they (and their victims) stupidly continue to misunderstand.
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I bet IBTP really hated those birthday cakes and presents when she was a kid.
I thought ritual was primarily a socialization device.
Each brand of religion is different. I don’t remember much ritual about the Quakers except for sitting for an hour a week in silence.
But think of all the ritualization in the catholics – expecially the bit about pennance – saying so many hai mayy’s or whatever as you count on your prayer beads. Clearly this religion was designed as a socially acceptable way to channel obsessive compulsives.
God?
Evolution?
The God Delusion? Part 6
“The fact that Dawkins is serving as point man for a broad sense of outrage among scientists who want religion to stay out of the laboratory is admirable. But that is a social issue. The deeper issue is whether God has anything to offer to science. Dawkins emphatically thinks there is no practical use for God, the soul, transcendence, or any other so-called spiritual concept in his field, which is evolutionary biology.”
“This brings us to another main point.
6. The evolution of life can be explained completely without intruding the notion of an intelligent designer.”
“Dawkins falls prey, not to the delusion of God, but to the delusion of an all-mighty chance acting mindlessly through matter. He cannot admit the possibility of an ordering force in Nature. Therefore, he has no ability to discover the precursors of the human mind, which is ultimately the greatest triumph of evolutionary biology, not DNA. Until we have a credible explanation for mind, it’s pointless to argue about God as if we understand what’s at stake. Religion and science are both operating with incomplete concepts.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-god-delusion-part-6_b_35339.html
Also:
Technology and Religion by Deepak Chopra
Rustum Roy writes a letter:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/technology-and-religion_b_35345.html
also at :
http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2006/11/rustum_roys_let.html
a comment:
“This slight of Richard Dawkins and others, as contained in Dr. Roy’s letter, cannot be a fair fight if Richard is not included in this debate to defend his position.
Perhaps, we should arrange to have a no-hold-bar telivision debate Between Dr. Chopra & Dr. Dawkins to settle this issue, once-for-all. It would certainly make for riveting viewing, don’t you think?
Regards.” Ron Saywack
A response:
“Dear Ron Saywack,
The interaction that you suggest between Deepak and Richard Dawkins has already been filmed by Channel 4 (UK) in Oxford. The television program has not been aired. After it is broadcast, we will be sure to post it on this site. Deepak has also invited Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic Magazine, to facilitate further interactions with Dr. Dawkins. Michael Shermer is currently working on this. We will keep you and other bloggers informed.
Warm regards,
Carolyn
Office of Deepak Chopra”
I also agree the ritual is not routine, but it need not be motivated by any magic pixie dust either. Rituals are around us all the time and are part of the way we interact with our environment. It helps us move between the various spheres of our lives, to shift gears. For instance, a trip to the doctor’s office is steeped in rituals that you do not even notice. Imagine meeting your urologist for a beer down at the pub and then doing the turn-your-head-and-cough routine. I must say that the whole waiting room, nurses, and medical ritual make me comfortable with the fact that a strange guy I just met is squeezing my balls. [Not that there is anything wrong with that. ;-)]
I like a lot of rituals – just not religious or primarily religious ones. Graduations, weddings, retirement dinners, anniversary parties, Thansgiving dinners, etc. – they all have plenty of ritualistic elements. One thing that I think draws me to them is they call attention to the passage and nature of time – repeating patterns that shift and change over time. The same words and actions repeated at different times by different actors under different circumstances; once I wore that graduation gown and now my daughter does. There is something about that which is beautiful and resonant about that.
But watching a bunch of guys flounce around in lacy robes and pretend to create and then eat a magical guy’s “flesh” and “blood”? – yeah, I can do without that.
ChopraFan, a sincere fan of Chopra would allow Chopra’s self-humiliation to continue in the corner, without drawing the cruel judgment of people who have actually read Dawkins.
PZ, you should have clipped the part about breasts from the original post. Then this discussion would have perhaps stayed on track.
“PZ, you should have clipped the part about breasts from the original post. Then this discussion would have perhaps stayed on track.”
Yeah, the solution isn’t to challenge sexism, but to refuse to include in our argumentation any challenge to relevant pet topics of the American patriarchy. Yay. That’ll solve everything.
I must protest! This would make listening to 4’33” superfluous!
ritual does give a feeling of continuity, of being “part of the club”. but the ritual itself needs to be flexible enough to accommodate changing needs (e.g. baby-welcoming ceremonies that don’t involve cutting the baby’s genitals).
people (most people) really enjoy shared experiences (it does go a long way to help people bond), particularly when those experiences are fun and well catered.
and studies have shown that people who attend a group meeting of some kind once a month survive life-threatening illnesses better. it’s about having a feeling of community and having something to look forward to: but it doesn’t matter if it’s church or bowling (i would argue that the bowling would be better for your soul).
Skeptic Magazine, Mchael Shermer, Dawkins and Deepak Chopra
Comment by a skeptic and a response by Deepak Chopra reposted.
The God Delusion? Part 6
http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2006/12/the_god_delusio_5.html
Comment:
“You are so unfair Deepak. Here we have Richard Dawkins, who happens to be the world’s foremost evolutionary biologist, and you put the following garbage in his mouth:
Deepak: “Dawkins falls prey, not to the delusion of God, but to the delusion of an all-mighty chance acting mindlessly through matter. He cannot admit the possibility of an ordering force in Nature”.
With this statement you show your unbelievable ignorance!” posted by Skeptisch
Response:
“Dear Skeptisch,
It is not important who is in whose camp. We are all expressing our point of view from what little we know. I think there is some validity in all points of view including those of our harshest critics. I have invited Michael Shermer, Editor and Chief of Skeptic Magazine, to engage in debate at Caltech and also Harvard Divinity School. Michael has very graciously accepted this invitation. As we finalize the dates, I will keep everyone posted. In any case, he and I are going to express our points of view in Skeptic Magazine. You should see something in the next two weeks in eskeptic (http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/index.html).
Michael Shermer also invited Richard Dawkins to respond to a review of The God Delusion that I did for Skeptic Magazine. Michael replied,
“I still haven’t heard back from my Caltech contact about availability of Beckman auditorium, but I just sent a reminder email requesting dates.
Deepak, Dawkins declined to respond to your review. He didn’t offer a reason, just said he did not wish to respond.
Michael”
As I have mentioned in previous posts, Dawkins and I did have a very spirited exchange which has been filmed by Channel 4 (UK) and which I thoroughly enjoyed. We will post once it has been aired.
Skeptisch, I do enjoy reading your comments as they are extremely intelligent and do make one think. I am sure you are aware of the difference between skepticism and cynicism. Healthy skepticism and open-mindedness are essential ingredients for creativity. Michael Shermer is a good example of that. Cynicism and particularly closed-minded cynical mistrust is, on the other hand, quite unhealthy. In many studies it has been shown to be high risk factor for premature death from cardio-vascular disease.
Love,
Deepak”
I think that, like Bach, ritual has been subsumed and co-opted by religions; they need not go together. Somebody mentioned Quakers as having a nearly ritual-free religion. I would point to a Grateful Dead concert as an example of a nearly religion-free ritual (an observation shared, I believe, with Joseph Campbell).
(and, by the way, many sizes & shapes of tits are sexy, and Van Morrison was once a genius, but not any more.)
Reading the book and Random Evolution.
A comment and a response reposted from:
http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2006/12/the_god_delusio_5.html
“Once again, Deepak, you really ought to read the book before criticizing it. You make yourself sound foolish when you criticize Dawkins for saying something he doesn’t say.
Do you know how many times in “The God Delusion” Dawkins states that the theory of natural selection is the exact opposite of chance? Yet you state that “Dawkins falls prey, not to the delusion of God, but to the delusion of an all-mighty chance acting mindlessly through matter.”
This is the opposite of what Dawkins says. The opposite. Read the book.” Mithch_Wilkers
“Dear Mitch_Wilkers,
I have read Dawkins’ book. You will see the review in Skeptic Magazine soon. As to your point, natural selection is not random but mutations are, a point that Dawkins makes as well. For now I am going to stop commenting on these threads. I thank you for all your feedback. I intend to do a full post addressing all the points that have been raised on these boards. I will do so, however, after I have finished writing the complete series.
Love,
Deepak”
Wait…how is “big tits are sexy” a patriarchal tool? They are! I think it’s “small tits are not” that could be portrayed as a negative concept.
I like ’em pointy.
Keeping in mind that not all ritual is religious in nature – Do any of you really WANT to live in a society or world without ritual. Seems like a silly thing to rail against.
people (most people) really enjoy shared experiences (it does go a long way to help people bond), particularly when those experiences are fun and well catered.
I am forever bonded to those souls with whom I shared the experience of using an overflowing port-o-let at Alpine Valley before a Grateful Dead concert.
Ritual:
“a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual )
“part of an established routine”, 1 of 11 def’s. ( http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=ritual )
But it makes more sense to emphasis the symbolic value.
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Do I like rituals? That depends:
– Rituals that guides social context (handshakes, for example): Comforting, but not strictly necessary.
– Rituals that informs social context (weddings, for example): Informative, but not strictly necessary.
– Rituals that evokes mindless group behaviour (sportive, military or religious rituals): Why the need to be trained on participating in the weaker and more dangerous parts of the human condition?
Ritual:
“a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual )
“part of an established routine”, 1 of 11 def’s. ( http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=ritual )
But it makes more sense to emphasis the symbolic value.
…
Do I like rituals? That depends:
– Rituals that guides social context (handshakes, for example): Comforting, but not strictly necessary.
– Rituals that informs social context (weddings, for example): Informative, but not strictly necessary.
– Rituals that evokes mindless group behaviour (sportive, military or religious rituals): Why the need to be trained on participating in the weaker and more dangerous parts of the human condition?
No problem. As soon as you stop equating all expressions of physical attraction with “objectification.”
Hmm. But I also like to dance, and an active dance floor is also group behavior of sorts. Yikes, what am I doing with my spare time? :-)
Hmm. But I also like to dance, and an active dance floor is also group behavior of sorts. Yikes, what am I doing with my spare time? :-)
So long as you are doing most of your dancing in rock’n’roll pizza parlors, Torbjorn, all will be forgiven.
Azkyroth:
As soon as you stop equating all expressions of physical attraction with “objectification.”
I haven’t seen anyone expression of physical attraction toward any person at all, just titties of various sizes, shapes and textures. I think that could be reasonably described as objectification.
Main Entry: 1rit·u·al
Pronunciation: ‘ri-ch&-w&l, -ch&l; ‘rich-w&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin ritualis, from ritus rite
1 : of or relating to rites or a ritual : CEREMONIAL
2 : according to religious law
3 : done in accordance with social custom or normal protocol
– rit·u·al·ly adverb
Main Entry: 2ritual
Function: noun
1 : the established form for a ceremony; specifically : the order of words prescribed for a religious ceremony
2 a : ritual observance; specifically : a system of rites b : a ceremonial act or action c : an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner
ain Entry: 1rou·tine b : habitual or mechanical performance of an established procedure
2 : a reiterated speech or formula
3 : a worked-out part (as of an entertainment or sports contest) that may be often repeated ; especially : a theatrical number
Pronunciation: rü-‘tEn
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Middle French, from route traveled way
1 a : a regular course of procedure
4 : a sequence of computer instructions for performing a particular task
Main Entry: 2rou·tine
Pronunciation: rü-‘tEn, ‘rü-”
Function: adjective
1 : of a commonplace or repetitious character : ORDINARY
2 : of, relating to, or being in accordance with established procedure
– rou·tine·ly adverb
from Merriam-Webster on-line
Always use a dictionary when debating the meaning of words!
How many atheists celebrate Thanksgiving? I’ll bet even militant feminish Matriarchists celebrate Thanksgiving.
Caledonian, I’m afraid you lose that bet.
On a serious note, mammals don’t react at all well to being put in dangerous/painful situations that they can’t respond to in some productive way. The responses don’t necessarily have to be efficacious as long as they’re some way of attempting to deal with the problem.
Intelligent, financially-well-off, educated people with a host of mental coping strategies and available methods to deal with problems probably don’t need ritual. Poor, uneducated, ignorant people who have few resources available to them desperately need something to do about problems they can’t affect or cope with properly – so they invented religion.
I meant my above comments in the same jokey tone as the IBTP poster-but c’mon, its just silly to pretend that physical features DON’T play a role in sexual attraction. Is it the only thing? Not at all. Is it a sufficient basis for a relationship? Of course not.
“Intelligent, financially-well-off, educated people with a host of mental coping strategies and available methods to deal with problems probably don’t need ritual.”
You have obviously never been to a Thanksgiving weekend with my (ex) girlfriend’s parents.
It seems like a lot of this ritual discussion is related to which meaning of the word is being discussed. A ritual can be something that is compulsory for religious reasons, or something that one does repeatedly by choice or habit… To me, the key defining factor is that it’s something that one does as a practice without thinking about the rationale each time one does it… or that one does repetitively as some sort of reminder of something it symbolizes. I think that in terms of animal behavior, it’s often the case that a learned rote behavior that works for an animal is “comfortable” as an evolutionary mechanism which encourages animals to continue behaviors that have allowed them to be successful in their lives, as opposed to trying novel behaviors which might introduce more risk. Humans have expanded this behavior somewhat, but largely follow the same pattern that any animal that has learned, rather than hard-wired, behaviors will do. Of course, this leads to irrational or at least non-optimal behavior some of the time, but it’s understandable why it’s, on average, a desirable evolutionary trait, although I think it’s found a balance with novelty, creativity, and the ability to develop responsive rather than habitual behaviors… it’s the trade off between “do what’s normal/expected” and “think for yourself,” I guess.
Applying evolutionary biology arguments to the “big tits are sexy” discussion is left as a (beginner’s level) exercise for the reader.
And then there’s the approach whereby the well-off educated elite use ritual to subjugate the poor uneducated masses as one highly-effective “coping strategy”…
Ever seen dogs sniff each others butts and engage in heirarchical rituals? They’re animals. We’re people. Right?
Purely as an aside, interesting that IBTP would describe this year’s election in the following manner:
“American voters had more or less socked it to the Bush regime doggie-style.”
I guess some patriarchal metaphors (a rape fantasy, no less) are too good to pass up.
I think she meant that American voters repeatedly licked the Bush regime’s face then barked a lot and ran back and forth across the kitchen floor like lunatics then barfed on the living room carpet. Metaphorically. Does everything have to be about sex, sex, sex? ;-)
“Does everything have to be about sex, sex, sex?”
Touché.
-MissPrism
Since the number of men (or women, for that matter) who would find a disembodied (severed? x.x) pair of breasts arousing or attractive, while they (alarmingly) do seem to exist, is vanishingly small, I felt it reasonable to read this as a statement that “[All other things being equal, women with]big tits are [more] sexy [than those without them; meanwhile, men or squid with big tits are rather disturbing].” Yu object to people to the U.S. executive branch as “the White House,” or to the stock market as “Wall Street?” It’s not quite the same, I’ll admit, but it’s basically the same concept of shorthand.
The idea that “feminists” are more interested in arguing semantics than politics is an obnoxious and hateful stereotype (I can’t be the only one who’s noticed some people think that). It really shouldn’t be fed…
It’s even sillier that in many circles one can’t acknowledge that physical features play a role in sexual attraction without having someone shove “and that’s all that matters to me” in one’s mouth and then bitch at one for it.
“Twisty is rolling in her grave ”
If I were actually dead, no doubt I’d at least be twitching.
By the way, I didn’t make it clear enough in my post, but when I wrote “ritual” I meant stuff like circumcisions, wakes, bachelor parties, and any other kind of culturally-mandated ceremonial behavior that can reliably be predicted to be practiced on the relevant occasions. Morning coffee, which some have proposed to define as ritual, is just a habit.
Here’s how you tell the difference: rituals always include guilt and pressure to conform. Like the psych-out that occurs when you call and tell your mom you’re not coming home for Xmas. On the other hand, only the most psychotic mothers throw a guilt fit if you call and say, “sorry Mom, but I’m just not going to use the Krups with the Melitta filters to make my morning coffee anymore. In fact, I’m thinking of switching to midmorning pomegranate smoothies. You and Papa and Tiny Tim will just have to soldier on without me.”
Stevepinhead, I’m usually clubbing since I like to move my body. But if nurse Bettinke shows up I may make an exception!
Stevepinhead, I’m usually clubbing since I like to move my body. But if nurse Bettinke shows up I may make an exception!
Well, Twisty, my parents are dead, so I can’t go to their house for Christmas anyway.
But they did get upset one year when they came here and I didn’t even OWN a coffee maker. They insisted on going out and buying me one…..
PZ: I read Pharyngula routinely. I suppose it’s ‘part of my routine.’ Does this approach ritual?
I would say ‘yes’ if, in fact, I felt that the act of reading your blog symbolized something other than reading your blog. Symbols don’t have to be religious, and so any sort of act done routinely that carries any sort of symbolic value could be a ritual in my judgement.
Nothing wrong with that, either….SH
Mr. C remarks: “Intelligent, financially-well-off, educated people with a host of mental coping strategies and available methods to deal with problems probably don’t need ritual.”
Elvis Costello has an interesting song called ‘Alibi’. Anyone else ever heard it? It’s on the album “When I Was Cruel”. It’s a sly comment from a rather intelligent chap on the sort of mental coping strategies so many of us apply (I dare say) ritually.
Comments?…SH
Rituals surely help reinforce the meaning and psychology of religions, making them seem even more real. Talking in tongues, genuflecting, tossing petals, etc. Maybe a religion is just one huge ritual?
Note the feminist double-standard. What about “tools of the MATRIARCHY”? You know, “male wealth/power/status/tallness is sexy…men never ask for directions”? Of course the person behind the fleshy lobes is important, but humans didn’t evolve in a vacuum. They didn’t have biological stethoscopes or tongue-compressors or miniature surgeries with which to judge the reproductive potential of each other. They had to go on direct, usually visual, cues. And for thousands of generations, bustiness correlated with fecundity. Of course it’s primitive, but we need to ackowledge the causation of these things in order to help circumvent/overcome them…
Can coffee also be ejected from this thread? It’s an addictive drug, for crying out loud! That’s why people get ticked off if they suddenly can’t have their morning coffee! When I visited my sister who doesn’t indulge, I didn’t ask her to sit around drinking it with me, but I darn well did get her a one-cupper, filters, and a can of some decent grounds.
That said, I bet even PZ goes through rather more rituals in a {day, week, year} than he realizes. As noted above, small rituals are used in social interactions, larger ones are used for community building/ maintainance, and even without religion, traditions tend to accumulate around repeated events.
Out of the people complaining here about the “objectification” of female anatomy, is anyone bisexual? I ask because, although I have no problem with bisexuality, I’ve only been infatuated with or in love with people of the opposite sex myself, I don’t expect that to change, and I suspect most of you feel the same way.
Then, if we can admit that the particular patterns of fleshy convexities and concavities on a potential partner makes a difference, can we also accept that people might attach varying levels of importance to varying degreees of that difference without their personal tastes making them good or evil?
If you place little importance on physical attributes, that will probably widen your dating options and make you more likely to satisfy the other criteria you’re looking for, so good for you… but please try to avoid sounding holier-than-thou about it. Doing so is especially grating if you still place some importance on physical attributes like gender – as the old joke goes, at that point we’re just haggling over price.
“Comments?…SH”
Anybody who thinks he or she is “beyond” ritual is seriously deluded. Ritual is the process by which people are socialized into peer groups.
Just because it doesn’t involve censers, funny hats, and castrati doesn’t make it any less ritualistic.
Consider, just for a moment, the rituals involved in eating a meal at a restaurant.
If it weren’t for the rituals, the obvious class differences between server and served would be too naked for a liberal to digest without panturination.
If it weren’t for the rituals, the obvious class differences between server and served would be too naked for a liberal to digest without panturination.
yes, I often consider the class differences when i sit down to eat at a McDonalds.
phht.
PZ: I read Pharyngula routinely. I suppose it’s ‘part of my routine.’ Does this approach ritual?
yes, at the risk of conflating habit with ritual. Just like many feel more comfortable with their morning paper, I suspect these blogs serve the same function for many, if not most.
habit or ritual? doesn’t one kinda bleed into the other?
as to whether one “needs” these things, as I’ve heard a lot of the religious argue about religion as ritual itself, I’d say no, but they do help one to focus on the rest of the day’s activities in a lot of cases.
big/small/whatever titties are/are not sexy
I tell you what ISN’T sexy, and that’s a bunch of adolescent males insisting on reducing other human beings to a collection of body-parts to be judged and used for their own personal wankertainment.
Followed of course by the usual pathetic defence of “but it’s biology – we can’t help ourselves – it’s only becuase we’re *so attracted* to you really – waaah we hate feminists waaah”.
“censers, funny hats, and castrati”
Stephen, wow, sounds like you, me and GWW were all at that same Alpine Valley show!
It’s nice that Twisty somehow believes she is above “guilt and the pressure to conform.” Apparently she has no use for ritual whatsoever. Must be sad to never go to graduation, happy hour, birthday party, etc. Not to mention attending rallies to remember the anniversary of Roe V Wade, Women’s suffrage, or Take Back the Night. But then those are all tools of Patriarchy so I suppose she finds it liberating.
Hopefully she can help PZ out too since he has mentioned at least a couple of non-religious ‘rituals’ that he enjoys. Poor PZ, still a member of human society
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/05/that_time_of_year_that_tedious.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/04/blackbeard_on_a_hydroplane.php
I celebrate birthdays and Christmas, sure — but these are practices I indulge in because I like the content, not because the formal observance itself is intrinsically interesting. Ritual is engaging in patterned behavior for the sake of the patterns, not because it has virtues of its own.
Now maybe, somewhere, someone enjoys the Catholic mass because all the up-and-down is nice low-impact exercise for the knee joint, and the cracker at the end is tasty…but most do not indulge for such concrete rewards.
Those who read this site regularly are not doing so out of a sense of ritual. If they are, I could just dump a little “lorem ipsum” every morning without otherwise putting any thought into the content, and you’d all keep reading. I guarantee you that daily word salad would lead to catastrophically declining traffic.
Ritual is a tool to control or prevent thinking. It serves a few more purposes, but those are the main ones.
If they are, I could just dump a little “lorem ipsum” every morning without otherwise putting any thought into the content
be careful… a lot of what you put up here requires only a modicum of thoughtfulness.
I don’t think you can rightly conclude what the motivations of all of your regular readers are, without asking them directly, and there are those who directly said they view coming here as routine bordering on ritual, like Scott did.
In my own experiences, I know for a fact that church services are seen by many as a routine that makes for a comfortable habit, far more than they see them as “educational”. Similarly, I’m sure many come here sheerly for the entertainment value of blowing off a chunk of time to see what weirdness you have discovered in the wide world of funkdom that is religion, and occassionally be stimulated by a treatise on one of the newer articles in evolutionary biology or developmental biology. It DOES become like a comfortable routine after a while, complete with making sure a nice hot cup of coffee is at hand while perusing the threads.
that said, I tend to separte habit, routine, ritual, and religion in a similar fashion to the way dcwp does above. they do tend to bleed one into the other, and there doesn’t need to be any more of a negative connotation to ritual itself than there does to habit.
In another thread, the idea of the tailgate parties for NFL games were brought up as a great example of secular ritual, for example.
Do you have ANY reason for assuming any of the males involved to be “adolescent” other than your own cartoonish prejudices?
And do you have ANY excuse for discounting out of hand the explanations of why the observations about breasts being attractive features, while perhaps a bit crass, do not constitute “reducing other human beings to a collection of body-parts to be judged and used for their own personal wankertainment?” You do realize that this is the level of argument we have come to expect from the likes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, don’t you?
Not only is every part of this pure, undiluted straw man, can you name even one place where anyone has said anything that even a reactionary idiot could credible have HONESTLY misinterpreted as reducible to “waaah we hate feminists waaah?”
The stereotype that “feminists” are misandric, dogmatic, and prone to appallingly fallacious arguments and knee-jerk reactionary cracks is also obnoxious and hateful. Please stop feeding it.
Careful, PZ. Ritual is often present in things that we would do even without the ritual. Ceremonies abound for the simple task of the consumption of food, for example.
Are you sure that there isn’t an element of the formal observance at play here? Wouldn’t other members of your various social groups – your family for example – feel bad if you didn’t indulge in at least the formal observance of their birthdays?
Twisty has suggested that guilt and obligation are keys to her ex rectum definition of ritual. I’m guessing that you would feel a modicum of guilt if you decided one year that you weren’t interested in the content of your wife’s birthday celebration so you skipped the formal ovbservance. I’d venture further that there are people to whom Twisty owes similar obligations.
It’s fine to reject social rules that you find senseless or stifling. It’s great to actively work against rituals that you consider to be oppressive. But there is no shame in admitting that you are a member of society and that sometimes you do things because someone else expects you to. Guilt and obligaiton can be abused or wasted emotions, but they are part of human sociality. People who don’t feel them are considered sociopaths. This isn’t part of some religious morality scheme, it’s part of participating in society.
Seriously the whole ‘I don’t need ritual and I reject the concept of social obligations’ meme is reminiscent of the anti-science crowd’s ‘Scientists built the A-bomb so all science is dangerous.’ Everything in controlled moderation my friends.
Kind of a sneaky leap from “I don’t need ritual” to “I reject the concept of social obligations,” don’t you think?
Twisty’s definition of ritual includes the following:
It seems here, and I would agree, that ritual includes social obligation. A complete rejection of ritual would involve a dismissal of obligations, this to me is the nugget of the issue. If you are a functioning member of society, you participate in ritual.
I can dig that many folks try to avoid certain types of ritual, especially religiously motivated ones. But the complete dismissal of ritual in this discussion seems to involve far wider brush strokes than are normal around here and I don’t see how it’s productive.
There seems to be a lot of defensiveness here about the right to discuss tits because they are related to attractiveness. It’s been indirectly noted that this is a subjective issue. Some people like small, some like big, some like big and firm, and some like pointy… The list is endless.
What is most telling is that this breast discussion is happening on a thread about rituals instead of about breast preferences where it would be appropriate. Sure Twisty brought up breasts, but she brought them up in the context that the meme of “big tits are sexy” is about more than natural instinct. No one is saying that people can’t prefer big tits. Nor are people who prefer big tits inherently bad/evil/misogynist because of their preferences. The gist isn’t that you should be judged for your preferences, but rather that you should examine how they became your preferences in the first place.
I should probably say something more on topic, so I guess I will add that I am a creature of many habits, but I abhor ritual. I generally don’t celebrate holidays/birthdays/etc. and when I do it’s more as an excuse to see friends and/or avoid work or out of familial guilt. Habits are things that you do for yourself. Rituals are things that you do for someone/something else with foresight/fear/guilt about the consequences of not doing them.
I think we should take every “tit” comment and substitute “dick” instead.
And in that context, I like dicks perky and big, and I love to check them out when you wear tight jeans.
All you guys discussing tits, I want you to think about what I just said every time you’re around a 60 year old grandmotherly woman. Maybe a friend of your mom’s, or you work with her, or you passed her in the grocery store. No doubt she’s checkin’ you thangs out.
If that makes you feel a little weird, multiply that by 100 and you’ll understand the way women feel when you discuss their disembodied bits.
I was going to bang on about how the feminism/mens rights, female/male stereotypes debate is usually sterile. It is another head game. So I’ll stop.
This thread seems to have expanded into discussion into the religiosity of habit/routine/ritual/ceremony. I suspect that how you regard repeated events depends on what you get out of them…
In my case:
Habit is something I do the same way.
Routine is a habit I do on a regular basis.
Ritual is a set of symbolic acts carried out with or by other people generally for religious or philosophic reasons – I don’t do these.
Ceremony is ritual without the ‘inner meaning’ – I’ll go along with these if I wish to please relatives, or it is entertaining, etc.
Of course there is also ‘tradition’ which is a habit/routine/ritual/ceremony which is done because ‘we have always done it’. Like most people I’ll go along with these, but often they can be stopped dead by not following tradition for one instance (eg due to compelling circumstances) and suddenly the need to observe tradition is broken.
Go figure.
I’m rather glad I’m not a woman; having to take it personally every time another woman implicitly presumed that her personal position on something was characteristic of every member of the sex would get really old, really fast.
Worse, I could habitually claim to speak for all women, and then complain about “men” assuming women are all alike, with the eventual result of my head exploding like a fungus-infested ant’s when I stopped and thought about the juxtaposition.
While I’m at it, Alix, I’m actually rather neutral on that prospect. I would certainly object to strange women of any age walking up and grabbing my crotch, and would in fact probably respond with a modest degree of physical force. I would’t particularly object to an interested glance, though I would find it rather crass if it were blatant and roll my eyes or sigh irritatedly; I wouldn’t act at all surprised if my crotch tended to get stared at more if I chose to wear tight, thin pants–particularly without briefs–that prominently displayed it; and I certainly wouldn’t (and don’t) have a strong negative reaction to women (or gay men) frankly discussing what they find appealing about men’s bodies, provided they extend the same degree of accomodation to any men (or lesbians) present doing likewise–again, I might find it crass, but I wouldn’t respond by lashing out contemptuously or straddling the line between trigger-happy and “Caleb” in shooting off loaded words like “objectification.”
Also, where do you get the “multiply by 100” from–how do you know there’s a difference of that scale (let alone a constant difference; see paragraphs 1 and 2 of this comment)? Have you ever been a man (not that I would think less of you if you had, mind you…)?